Foundations of the nineteenth century Author:Houston Stewart Chamberlain Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECOND PART THE RISE OF A NEW WORLD Die Natur schafft ewig neue Gestalten ; was da ist, war noch nie; was war, kommt tiltht wieder. GOETHB. NINTH CHAPT... more »ER FROM THE YEAR 1200 TO THE YEAR 1800 The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day; be famous then By wisdom; as thy empire must extend. So let extend thy mind o'er all the world. Milton. A. THE TEUTONS AS CREATORS OF A NEW CULTURE Wir, vir leben I Unser sind die Stunden, Ond del Lebcnde hat Recht. Schiller. Teutonic Italy same feature of an indomitable individualism, which, in political as well as in religious affairs, conduced to the rejection of universal- ism and to the formation of nations, led to the creation of a new world, that is to say, of an absolutely new order of society adapted to the character, the needs, andjthe gifts of a new species of men. It was a creation brought about by natural necessity, the creation of a new civilisation, a new culture. It was Teutonic blood and Teutonic blood alone (in the wide sense in which I take the word, that is to say, embracing the Celtic, Teutonic and Slavonic, or North European races) that formed the impelling force and the informingpower. It is impossible to estimate aright the genius and development of our North-European culture, if we obstinately shut our eyes to the fact that it is a definite species of mankind which constitutes its physical and moral basis. We see that clearly to-day : for the less Teutonic a land is, the more uncivilised it is. He who at the present time travels from London to Rome passes from fog into sunshine, but at the same time from the most refined civilisation and high culture into semi-barbarism— dirt, coarseness, falsehood, poverty. Yet Italy has never ceased for a single day to be a focus of highly develo...« less